PTSD Epidemic – A Look at Mental Healing

By White Wolf Von Atzingen

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

There is an ugly epidemic that openly lurks within the United States in every town, city and state. It is an epidemic that has been steadily increasing for decades upon decades. Its face can be blatantly seen or shrouded under protective masks. Building like storm waves beneath the surface, the PTSD epidemic expands and touches lives far and wide.

PTSD – or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – first started to gain attention heavily back in the 1940’s but the earliest recorded documentation of identifying this epidemic condition of today was back in the late 1500’s. Though it was during and after World War 2 that PTSD was first directly observed and studies into the condition began in the realms of medical and mental sciences, the rate of increase in cases from the 1940’s through to today has skyrocketed.

Today, PTSD has become an epidemic that plagues every level of the social system, from the poor to the wealthy and spanning all ethnicities.

Though it can affect anyone, both male and female, young and old it is hardest struck in those who have endured extreme levels of trauma. Of course not everyone who has or will go through trauma will develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Statistics show only about 8% of men who experience hardcore trauma will develop PTSD and 20% of women develop the condition. Interestingly children under ten years of age who experience trauma are less likely to develop PTSD than teens and adults. Nonetheless it has been seen that children who suffered trauma to the point of developing dissociation conditions are far more likely to develop PTSD later in life if they endure some traumatic experience than those who have not been forced into dissociative behaviors.

Common terms prior to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) have been Shellshock, Soldier’s Heart, Combat Stress Reaction, Battle Fatigue and many others. PTSD was the official term brought into play in 1970’s when many Vietnam Veterans were being heavily affected by post war stress. The last number I heard was that 830,000 Vietnam Veterans were diagnosed with PTSD. That percentage of vets who developed PTSD were far higher for those who experienced combat than those who did not.

Even though a small percentage of people who experience trauma actually develop PTSD the sheer numbers of people who are diagnosed with the condition are staggering. To make matter even higher, there are a great many people out there who are thought to have the condition in some form that are not diagnosed. Another interesting fact is that people who have been conditioned or made aware of potential side-effects of trauma are far less likely to develop PTSD if they experience trauma.

The point of this article however, is to bring light to a sobering fact of this growing epidemic and some potent points that go hand-in-hand.

There are two major types of PTSD that seem to be the two headline titles that others fall under and they are:

• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Most people that are diagnosed with PTSD have the “simplified” Post Traumatic Disorder verses the Complex version. From my research it appears that more combat veterans possess the Complex version than those with other forms of traumas. The name of course gives rise to the understanding that the Complex version is far more difficult to treat than the regular PTSD due to its many levels. The Complex version supposedly stems from repeated and extreme levels of ongoing trauma verses singular events like a car wreck or rape. No matter which version or the name, both are serious issues and disrupt many lives.

For the purpose of keeping things simple and so we are all on the same page I will continue to use those two terms, PTSD and CPTSD. Personally I fee there are many other levels that go along with both of those and many other terms could be used. I also personally feel that just about any kind of trauma could give rise to either one of those conditions. Terms or no terms, they are just names given to a huge bulk of complications and as I said, I will use them for reference and simplicity in the rest of this article.

Remember, I am no professional here on such topics of PTSD. I am simply stating statistics that professionals in the psychology profession have publicly made available as well as my own opinions and finds based upon personal research and firsthand experience.

When I first heard of PTSD I thought it was purely an emotional issue and had no idea what it actually entailed. So when I was first diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder I was rather shocked and surprised. Study and the help of knowledgeable people led me to find out the facts. In PTSD there are three areas of the brain that can be adversely affected:

• The Prefrontal Cortex
• The Amygdala
• The Hippocampus

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for personality expression, social behaviors, decision making and the planning of complex cognitive behaviors. The amygdala section of the brain formulates fear related memories and the hippocampus organizes memories into specific context of time, location and memory recall.

In people with PTSD the prefrontal cortex can be physically reduced in size and its functions slowed. The hippocampus can also be decreased in size and it function suppressed. The amygdala lobe however, can be physical enlarged and working in excess. I find it interesting that the amygdala sits next to the brainstem, which in humans is reptilian based and the source of our aggression and fight or flight response.

So the condition of PTSD I learned is not just some emotional issue but, a very real physical condition where severe trauma actually forced the brain to change not only its patterns but also the size and function of specific lobes that control large areas of our ability to function. It becomes very difficult to stop the fight or flight mechanism, place surfacing memories and flashbacks into their correct place of time and even successfully interact with people on the most basic levels. Dissociation occurs frequently, avoidance of situations, energies, places and people becomes forefront in daily regimes. Night terrors consume the dark hours of sleep and keep you in a constant state of tiredness that stresses the system even further.

I began to look further into this diagnosed condition and discovered that in many PTSD conditions the cortisol production of the adrenal glands is heightened. Over time this causes adrenal burn-out and thus the adrenals start producing less than normal cortisol. The other issue stems from the dual function of the adrenal glands, hormonal and nervous system. In some people the hormonal functions of the adrenals function fine but the nervous system aspect in their communication with the brain is where the difficulty exists. This became the case with me. For too many years my adrenals were working in full swing to deal with the lifestyle and ongoing extreme levels of trauma. No organ or gland can hold up that pace of production forever. There came a time when they basically said, “Enough!” This leads to energy crashes and extreme swells of fatigue that can plague the daily life and everything one tries to do. With these crashes come so does dimmed mental focus and the darkness of the out of place past memory recall of trauma.

I can say from my own personal experience of living with CPTSD for many years that it is no fun and a constant challenge. The smallest lack of focus or sickness or some other situation that dulls the sharpness of personal awareness allows the darkness of CPTSD to creep in like oozing tar to clog the brain and distort the entire system internal. You cannot just turn it off. It is not a simple matter of changing your focus because it involves the actual functioning of the physical brain mechanics. Some days I am fine and hardly notice and other days… well other days are not so easy at all. During these days I retreat from the modern world and move myself into my element, the raw wilderness away from everything else. I have met others with various forms of PTSD from combat oriented backgrounds I see many similarities.

Did you know that there are around 300,000 veterans wandering homeless on the American streets? Over 65% of them served this country for at least three years and saw the horrors of combat. Stats show that the average veteran that is homeless spends a solid 6 years being homeless. 1.4 million Veterans of today are at risk of becoming homeless once they leave military service and somewhere around 465,000 vets are diagnosed with PTSD in some form. There is almost a 45% increase in divorce rates among veterans since the Vietnam conflict. In other words, something seriously is not working!

The offices and organizations to assist veterans are seriously understaffed and ill equipped financially to successfully assist all the vets who require it. A very small percentage has the actual resources to properly offer assistance. The suicide rate in 2005 was high for vets and has steadily climbed as the years have progressed. The secretary of veteran’s affairs announced in 2005 that the VA will not review 72,000 files from vets receiving financial assistance for PTSD. That was their response to the suicide statistics that were released the same year…

Through the grapevine it is being claimed that this year alone some 6,000 military majors were “laid off” and yet now through dictator Obama’s Dream Act the United States is allowing hordes of illegal aliens to join the military. Military “lifers” deployed in Afghanistan are being given pink slips and forced to leave before they gain 20 years and are due full pensions. Yet we have opened the doors for tons of illegal immigrants pouring into this country and have allowed them to join the military! Yet we do not have enough resources to help the hundreds of thousands who have served and are in desperate need of help! And still congress gets exorbitant raises and funding for useless programs.

The fact is that America has never gone more than a decade without engaging in war or “conflict”. Think on that for a moment. Humanity has become blind and numb to the plague that undermines the lives of millions. Politics and greed have become the point of normal focus and anything that interferes or falls outside that cold focal point is tossed aside. Most of the people diagnosed with PTSD are drugged with toxic chemical concoctions manufactured by the pharmaceutical corporations to keep the afflicted silenced and out of trouble. So long as the insurance companies see that a therapist saw a client for 15 minutes and made sure the clients prescriptions were refilled they say nothing and pay, but when a therapist actually attempts to seriously work with someone the insurance companies scream. That is a fact I gained from speaking with no less than five people I know inside the profession, not speculation.

Most of the psychiatric world is trained to handle people through prescribing drugs and nothing more. They are filled with fear themselves and literally got into the profession to try learning how to deal with their own fears, but for most it seems they succumb to the rigid cold system instead. There are very few out there who actually have a heart and the patience and skills to genuinely try helping people with PTSD. Other facts I have gained from communicating with people inside the profession.

Another twist in the dark game is that veterans for the most part at least have groups they can go to for support. They have community, but for those who came out of agencies and projects like myself, there are no groups. The vet offices will not entertain anyone coming out of black projects and agencies external of the military. This is yet another form of keeping the isolation protocols running in full force for those coming from internal dark agency programs. If it were not for my wife’s job and insurance I would have no available assistance. If I did not have her unconditional support on all levels and were not married I would not be a part of society, but rather would be deep in the wilderness away from it all. I could not live in a town of any kind. This I know. Many people that I know do not have any understanding of why I am the “way I am” or why I respond to certain things the way I do or act the way I do. They just pass me off as being an “oddball”. Even some of my family and closest friends really have little concept of what CPTSD actually is and what it creates. Some views are that it is my fault or that I am just not strong enough to “get past it”. That is the long and short of it.

I am doing my best to write this article as straightforward and neutrally as possible because there is deep anger surround the whole issue and topic because I have also felt the brunt of it. Not being able to hold a full-time job, jumping in and out of the medical facilities and running through all kinds of tests because my body has suffered severely in the service of this country and dealing with CPTSD… yes I am doing my best here because it hits deep, but I am holding my f*#* tongue.

Blood, money and drugs do not wash away the scars and nightmares. I understand how many people dislike the military and I am in agreement, but the soldiers that make up the bulk of the organizations both military and agencies are individuals, people, human beings. They give their lives for what they believe, even if it is not what many wish to hear or admit. Even though all wars are planned and organized, it is the individuals on the frontlines that suffer and bleed for the “freedoms” that we do have. Like it or not if we did not have the military forces this country would not be as “peaceful” as most of its civilians experience it as. I dislike the machine as much or more than many, but I also understand the reality we live in and I have witnessed firsthand what lives right outside the protective borders. I know what lives inside our borders as well and what keeps it in check. The pains and mutilations of my body and mind are constant reminders of this firsthand knowledge.

This article is not to gain pity but rather help to shed a bit more light on the reality of an epidemic growing larger and larger every year in our country and ruining the lives of millions. It is also to brings to light the way the system treats and views those in genuine need. Yet another failure of the system in which lives are the heavy cost. Do you know someone with PTSD? Do not alienate them. They do not have Ebola or Cholera. They are in pain and seek genuine support of care and love, not some false-face programmed response or drug. If they are a military or agency vet they suffered for your ability to walk outside in relative safety, travel from state to state, take vacations and sleep somewhat easy at night. We are all in this together and isolation and divisions of fear and prejudice are not the answer to anything.

Ugly Epidemic Reality

There was much talk on the article I wrote called Ugly Epidemic Reality. I was happy to see all of the comments (in the Wolf’s Den) of support, concern and intrigue dealing with somewhat stray but related side-topics of DNA opening, suppression and trauma induced mental enhancements. I have actually been quite pleased with the overall amount of discussion and thought processes you have all been openly displaying here in the Den over the last couple weeks.

As I sit and type this the sun sets behind the mountains to the west and brilliant orange hue gleams off the northern ridgeline from the remaining leaves like a fire upon the mountains. The temperatures drop into the 30’s and the fire in the wood stove crackles with life. The house is quiet except for the gurgling water from the large fish tanks that house familiar and lively finned companions watching me as much or more than I watch them. The dog sleeps next to my chair and the overall peace of the rural mountains fills the atmosphere while the rest of the world does its thing. I live here for a reason, a very necessary reason.

In my last article mentioned above I detailed some realities of PTSD and CPTSD mainly in relation to Veterans and the overall indifference of the government and gross lurking of pharmaceutical companies. I mentioned a small bit about my own personal situation and experience with such a “government life induced” condition.

What I did not really get into was details nor what it is I do in my daily life in attempt to deal with this aspect of my reality. The simple reality is that life upon this earth has given natural defenses and armor to all creatures in order that they may endure and withstand the harshness of earth-bound existence and its respective experiences. What the earth has not successfully yet supplied is proper and successful defenses against the extreme invasiveness of human tactics upon each other’s bodies and minds by use of technological and systematic tortures. Overall the mind is ill-equipped to handle the ongoing brutalities, horrors and tortures of select human conditions. War, torture, rendition, biological warfare, chemical warfare, frequency warfare, intentional psychic driving, mind control, etc; have not been things nature has been able to bestow successful protective mechanisms for. The closest defense our minds have been able to work with is dissociation and in all reality it really is not much of a defense.

Dissociation might save a person from physically dying under extreme trauma conditions, but in the long run it disrupts all other areas of life. Beyond dissociation there is no solid defense mechanism that has been set in place by the natural world. When you are forced to kill people or forced to watch people butchered alive and taught how to break people; when you are hanging from your wrists or ankles in chains being beaten or electrocuted, stuffed in sensory torture cubicles until you forget who you are and injected with chemical cocktails to forcefully change your body and mind to become better at killing, there is no defense mechanism for what happens beyond dissociation and mental breaking.

No other earthbound species has devised such ways to forcefully manipulate the members of its own kind to such a horrid extent beyond the human being. Is it any wonder why the world is such as it is? Sure some people have and do live lives seemingly removed from the outward infliction of human borne horrors, but it is simply an illusion for the first glance. If we look deeper we see that everyone is inflicted from various angles. The invasive frequency waves are everywhere, chemical toxins, laboratory created diseases, slander, gossip, judgment, prejudice, dictatorship created laws and punishments, war whether direct or residual in effect, kidnappings, human trafficking, drug pushers and countless others touch every single life upon the earth. Some people just happen to be in a more direct line than others. We are products of combined efforts of every person, place, organization and experience we have ever been in contact with.

Some of you hinted that perhaps my ability to survive and tap into seemingly “rare” abilities stems from the trauma I have been through and that it in some fashion broke into levels of the mind otherwise difficult to access. Well I really do not know. It is of course possible, but I cannot comment on the truth of it. All I know is what I have been through and what I am able to do and how I am able to live. How and why it has all come together is of course subject to vast amounts of interpretation. I used to think I had it all figured out, but that was just based upon insecurity. I have let all that go and accepted the reality that nobody really knows; we all just guess based upon where we have been in life. It is part of our vulnerability. But do not mistake vulnerability for victim. True, they can go hand-in-hand, but they are two very different things. Much like the opposite end in terms of anger and aggression; one is not the other, but they can be combined.

No matter, the effects reach far and wide and touch a great amount of people globally. PTSD, CPTSD and other forms of mental trauma inflict millions and millions and millions. The numbers of inflicted rise every year because of the way the human has been designing and manipulating the world. The controlling organizations do just enough to create a good window dressing, but if you dig deeper you find the truths and they are dark and dirty. I am not even going to mention the number of reports of Veterans that have been intentionally abused by the Veterans Association and hospitals! Disgusting!

Those of us who have no claim to rights through the Veterans privileges because we were agency and black ops oriented are bound to rely on personal insurance policies. This of course requires the ability to either hold a job that supplies the insurance coverage for you or a job that pays enough for you to buy your own policy. Or it requires that you be termed “poor” so that you qualify for Medicaid or the new obama healthcare program. This of course posses issues with the “middle class” because they end up paying the brunt of the new system. Our premiums are rising next year dramatically. Our out of pocket deductibles and general deductibles are also going up hundreds and hundreds of dollars. We already have one of the highest co-pays around. Therefore it makes attaining medical assistance that much harder even though we have insurance because by the time you are done paying for the insurance and then having to pay all the deductibles and co-pays you have little left. You make too much to qualify for the free healthcare of the obama system and too much to qualify for Medicaid, but you do not make enough to be able to cover all the deductibles. So traumas and past injuries that plague the body from government demanded participation in human atrocities linger on because they, who are responsible, will not acknowledge or pay for proper healthcare as they should. And alternative healthcare is not covered by insurance and so most of it is out of the equation immediately due to the high costs directly out of pocket.

So what about healing from or with PTSD/CPTSD? How does one go about that? After all the brain can heal anything it is claimed. I agree, IF the brain is unadulterated and is top working order. We need to be realistic in the fact that we utilize only a small fraction of the brain and I have yet to met anyone who has that usable section of the brain unhindered by this world. What happens when someone who has diagnosed PTSD/CPTSD? (I say diagnosed because if it is not diagnosed as such it could all too easily be something else.) How does the brain heal itself when select lobes are oppressed or enlarged in both size and chemical function due to the trauma, acute or chronic? Even with a fully functional and unhindered brain, within the accessible fraction, humans have proven they cannot instantly heal a broken femur. Healing in most cases takes time. This is actually can be quite beneficial because it can allow for introspection, but time itself can also pose many issues…

A Look At Mental Healing

At the end of the last article I said I would address some mental healing processes that I personally use to deal with the effects of CPTSD. Below I have attempted to do just that in the most straight forward and easy to understand format I could manage, while at the same time keeping it personal.

When I was first diagnosed with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) I had to take a step back because I had almost no idea what it was or meant. Beings who I am, I started researching and was quite surprised to find out how many of the symptoms I was personally experiencing and for a number of years before the diagnosis. I think I touched upon this in both the previous articles. Some of those many symptoms included:

• Dissociation.
• Avoidance of triggering people, places and things.
• Avoidance of socialization.
• Extreme hypersensitivity (hyper-vigilance).
• Aversion to things like loud noises, flashing lights, crowds, gatherings, towns, cities, stores; public places in general.
• Prone to extreme levels of rage and anger.
• High levels of irritability and agitation.
• Feeling emotionally numb more often than not.
• Physical exhaustion.
• “Black areas” in my life.
• Ongoing nightmares of real past extreme trauma events.
• Strong reoccurring flashbacks of past extreme trauma events that arise in both predictable and unpredictable situations.
• Sleep paralysis of intense and ongoing episodes.
• Insane levels of tinnitus (my ears can be so sensitive I need to wear earplugs at the dinner table because the mere noise of dishes and utensils feel like they are crushing my brain and the pain is searing).
• Ongoing chronic pain ranging from a 3 to 15 on a scale of 1-10 (yes those numbers are accurate).
• Ongoing headaches.
• Fluctuating issues with short-term memory.
• Old training protocols running through sections of my brain continuously.
• Episodes of inability or difficulty differentiating the past from the present.

Those are some, just some of the symptoms or issues that I deal with in my regular life that are said to go hand-in-hand with CPTSD and PTSD. There are more but I will cut it short there.

With that information in my hand I started seeking ways to assist myself in the healing process I was faced with. I was out of the agency and healing from being poisoned and almost losing my life, one of the many times unfortunately.

I began utilizing techniques taught to me when I was a child by my childhood Teacher. After a while I started broadening my scope and found other techniques put out by numerous other people. Well that did not turn out so well.

No matter, live and learn. I dumped all that garbage, shed and burned down the forest to start anew, and here I am. Though while trying to utilize those other people’s harmful techniques I stumbled and strayed and my focus went elsewhere. I began to focus more heavily outward upon goals and business driven visions structured upon helping others.

Steering more into the present, within the last year, I found out things were not happening inside. I discovered that enough was enough and it was time to get back to ME and what I required to heal, even if that meant putting aside many areas of my self created business that I had been heavily focused on. That sent me upon the current healing path I follow and dictate. In and out of countless medical offices and specialists, test after test and dabbled procedures here and there to rule out all the crap I had been told over the years and discover facts of my systems challenges. During that process through a new individual I was again diagnosed with deep trauma issues that I had literally forgot about. The symptoms of course have been and are still present in my life, but I had forgotten about the foundation they sit upon. Not to say I had forgotten the past traumas of course, just the injured sections of the brain that work against my attempts to heal from and move past those experiences.

So back to the drawing board of foundational issues and challenges. It was interesting that this all came into my awareness freshly the very same year I opened my new school, Element Mountain, with all its new energy and prospects/visions. As usual, the school focus and vision developed along with my own personal awareness’s of health issues, but one did not flow smoothly in conjunction with the other. The school focus began first, and then the personal focus followed. During the winter they met up and progressed together, both with high hopes and a bit of unrealistic visions… typical of the fire element.

Once summer was born into being the reality of my physical condition hit me and threw me for a bit of a loop because I started to see that my grand visions for Element Mountain were out of the scope of reality for my body with its many physical challenges. This was distressing considering how much time I invested into the creation and start-up of the new school and continued dream. This realization also did not assist the CPTSD symptoms.

Medical complications arose in August sending me into a bit of a tailspin in September. The condition severely triggered CPTSD symptoms and strongly dredged up many unresolved past issues surrounding very traumatic and painful experiences. This of course was a double edged knife. On one side it floored me physically, mentally and emotionally for almost a month and on the other side it brought into focus areas that I had either forgotten about of thought were “healed”, but quite obviously were not.

As I am still coming out of the tailspin I realized that my life needed some restructure, again. So I began setting fires to the forest yet again to burn out everything not absolutely necessary in my life. As in any solid wildfire, the only things remaining afterward are those that are either foundational or strongest and built to endure anything. The fires rage on and many things float away like fly-ash reminding me of their extraneous and unneeded position in my life.

What happened to cause this new or rebounded level of awareness? Proper work, self work and self focus, that’s what. Below you will find a list of things that I have been working that I solidly feel have been assisting me endure and slowly but surely move through the challenges on a mental and emotional level. Remember that statement because it will come back after the list.

• Stay grounded – remain as focused on the present, the now as possible – do not allow the mind to stray into the past or future.
• Pull back – if the focus does stray- stop and refocus on immediate surroundings and the 5 senses and what they are picking up – sight, sound, smell, hearing, taste, feel/touch.
• Focus on proper, healthy and individual specific diet- avoid consuming anything that you know makes you feel bad or distorts your focus – bad diet bogs down the body and stress the mental focus further.
• Stay well hydrated – a dehydrated brain and body have difficulty with focus and emotion/thought control.
• Remain well rested- being tired from lack of rest stresses the body, brain and emotions.
• Avoid anything that you know triggers you and stirs up symptoms.
• Breathe- focus on breathing fully and under stress, slow down the breath and inhale fully and exhale slowly and smoothly.
• Focus on your heartbeat – in times of stress focus on slowing down breathing and the rhythmic beating of your heart.
• Take the time you need- do not allow life and others to steal you from the time you require to rest, focus and heal- meditate.
• Every morning and night give thanks for everything you did well in the last 24 hours – compliment yourself.
• Every morning and night let go of everything that occurred during the day or night – just let it go – do not hold onto anything that happened.
• Do not beat yourself up over things that did not go so well for you in the last 24 hours – acknowledge that nobody is perfect and we learn best by making mistakes – it is human.
• Do not try to be perfect – instead just try to be You.
• Take time for yourself without remaining totally isolated – balance your interactions with others wisely – find the balance of “just right” with “too much” and watch out for” total avoidance”.
• Get a trustworthy, loyal and available support group – could be one person, five, ten people- whatever you have in your life – just make sure that not only can you trust them but that they are available- if they are not available they do you no good.
• Get exercise proper for you – regular exercise moves the body and its energy decreasing stagnation – it releases stress and relaxes the mind- it oxygenates the system creating a fresh and energizing feeling.
• Some people coming out of combat trauma backgrounds with some form of PTSD can benefit from exercise that contains excitement, like some form of outdoor/wilderness excursion – trekking mountains or tracking bear, cougar, etc… tracking and excursions involving tracking activities is a multi-faceted focus. It requires attention to body movement and positioning, pacing the body, mind and thought while controlling the emotions. It requires attention to detail and subtleties. It requires the body to work through trekking and navigating all manner of terrain off trail. It engages the creative aspects of the brain to think outside the box and conditioned limitations of conventional thought. It helps release hormones that stimulate the feelings of enjoyment, challenge, childlike energy, excitement,curiosity and other stimulations that include a full body/mind experience. It also takes people outside which also evokes a deep sense of belonging and primal existence, spirituality and freshness.
• Do not allow others to judge you – pay them no mind.
• Do not blame yourself for your past – it is not your fault.
• Be kind to yourself.
• Do not waste time trying to place blame on others for your past – both blaming yourself and blaming others accomplishes nothing and wastes precious focus and energy that could be placed into more productive healing energies.
• Try to acknowledge things/events of your past without getting lost in them – focus on them to let them go – flashbacks contain details to help us learn something in order to release – why do the specific flashbacks arise? They arise because there is something in them we need to face and release.
• Try utilizing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy- to me having someone I can trust who remains neutral to talk about traumatic past events assists in self reflection and release of old energies.
• Do your best to avoid people that want to hook you up on prescription drugs to “help your mental condition” – they do nothing more than numb your mind and steal your focus on true healing- they are just a toxic cover-up.
• Try looking at yourself through the eyes of a neutral, non-judgmental person.
• Learn to accept reintegration of all aspects of the self.
• Do not get addicted to the suffering.
• Understand that the suffering is not you – live passed the suffering because you are so much more – suffering is just part of the total experience, not the totality of it.
• Remember that it is not easy so it takes time, lots of time and pacing.
• Come to understand that the past helped create who we are today- helped give us a powerful insight and foundation of strength in which we might in some fashion helps others- even if that means remotely.
• Do not look at how far you have to go, but rather how far you have come.
• Have faith that in time, with enough work, diligence, self care and acceptance the mind and heart can heal the brain and emotions – life can again be something beautiful and worth waking up to – and maybe, just maybe the body won’t hurt so bad and the past will remain the past.

Now I am not saying all of the above are easy. Some can be very difficult. For instance we are all born with a certain amount of life force energy. The natural process of aging slowly depletes this energy over time. But if someone has gone through one or more extreme experiences that literally chopped off some of that life force energy the effects can be difficult to deal with. On a personal level I was born with a very high level of life force energy which allowed me to learn skills and funnel energy into those skills that many times placed me in a higher proficiency zone than others.

Due to the multiple experiences of extreme torture, multiple severe injuries that nearly claimed my life and the insane lifestyle through the agency a huge chunk of my original life force energy was cut away. Now being in my early 40’s the combination of age and the compiled effects of extreme physical, mental and emotional trauma has left its mark and has been increasing in noticeable functionality in my daily life. This has been extremely difficult for me to deal with. The reality of my life has been forcing me to reanalyze how I live, what I can and can no longer do without placing my internal systems at risk. I am being forced to restructure everything because of what my body has been through and how it now needs to be treated… and that includes my ability to teach. In a nutshell I never thought the past would catch up and I would feel this way so early in life. Its not easy waking up exhausted and in pain and feeling like crap, and going through the whole day feeling the same way only to go to bed feeling like that and start it all over again the next day, and the next day and weeks and months on end.

It is all too easy to point fingers and say, “You, you are the ones responsible for the way I feel today! You are the bastards that stole a chunk of my life that I cannot get back! It’s because of you and your twisted ways that I feel like I’m f*#@* 90 years old in my early 40’s! It’s because of what you forced me through that I live with constant pain and extreme fatigue and struggle just to get through most days! I will make you pay for what you took from me in ways you can’t even imagine!” Yes it’s very easy to let that rage boil and be directed, but it does no good and simply saps what energy I still have.

However, I am saying that for me in my experiences with working and healing CPTSD the above listed protocols have been and continue to be of great assistance!

Remember I said that the above list are things that have been assisting in the process of enduring and slowly but surely moving through the challenges on a mental and emotional level? I did not add physical. What I thought before was that all emotional and mental issues created all physical issues and by fixing the emotions and thoughts the physical issues would resolve. What I have found recently as for through the years is that this is not always the case because the body is subject to far more than just the effects of our emotions and thoughts. Therefore the body can suffer complications due to external sources. Sure if we draw enough lines and spend lots of energy on philosophical trails and speculations we could in some circumstances state that even the external conditions were created by or called by the emotional and mental issues. But in the long and short of it, I have personally found this to be rather a waste of precious and vital energy that can be better focused into the specific healing processes of the immediate needs of the body.

I have found, rather to my dismay, that as I have been healing areas of my emotions and mental energies over years, my body has not followed suit. I was hoping it would be that “simple” or direct in format. What I have found, at least in my case is that this format does not hold much weight. In-fact, the more emotional and mental healing I do, the more prominent the physical issues become because there is less distraction from it. It is what it is and to me it makes sense. The emotions and thoughts are non-physical and not bound by the density of this physical universe nearly as much as the flesh and blood body is. Yes I believe that in some cases people have and can heal instantly from certain conditions with the proper focus of mind and emotion, but not in all cases. You break your femur in two with it shifted and completely out of place, I don’t care how much you control your mind and emotion your femur will not magically be reset and perfectly knitted together instantly.

Again just to name a very few of my ongoing physical issues of reoccurring severe headaches, nerve damage in my neck and spine causing constant pain, chronic sinusitis, severe tinnitus, fried adrenal glands, chronic pain and body numbness, CTSD, arthritis, deep and wide spread scar tissue, inflammatory complications, migraine condition, flat spine with slipping ribs, some kind of nervous system malfunction with its production and metabolism of select chemicals and quite a few others..

All of those things are either direct or compilation damage from the ongoing and severe past traumas I endured throughout decades of my life. They present constant present day challenges in some of the most basic things I do. Talking literally exhausts me through my adrenals and lungs, whether in person or by phone or in front of a video camera. Being in areas with any kind of noise fries my adrenals and saps my energy. Any kind of stress these days also exhausts my adrenal output and once that is exhausted the rest of your energy’s integrity is gone. Sleeping is literally a pain with the damaged nerves in the neck and spine that always call out to remind me they are there. Of course they are kind enough to remind me of their presence in many daily activities and sometimes just with breathing itself. When the inflammation acts up the nerves get worse the arthritis pain kicks in and all the scar tissue through the muscles, fascia, tendons and ligaments balls up and creates massive rawhide knots throughout. Just a few of the things I deal with and live with on a regular basis.

Again, this is not written for pity, but rather I do my best to share and present in ways that contain lessons rather than just spewing… perhaps I am not always successful in this attempt, but I do my best.

Those physical conditions combined with emotional and mental aspects of having to work through the challenges of CPTSD and decades of extreme combat, torture and cult ritual related trauma makes for a very complex recipe to try managing. But as I have said many times before, it disturbs me is how many people use their diagnoses as a means to abandon living and all that it means. Sure it is those people’s choice and path and so be it, but it is not mine. I do the best I can to make myself useful and claim full responsibility for my healing path. I work it every day with great diligence and have for years. Sure it all sucks, but wallowing in self avoidance gets us nowhere.

It has been said that perseverance is not the long trail up the mountain, but rather numerous and consecutive short pathways. When one learns to fully accept and let go, stop trying to control or follow, but just be, one becomes the truth of a human being. Let us let go so we may move on and have the patience and self compassion to allow ourselves the proper time to do so.

And so life continues and trail goes ever onward…

Please note: This article is just a small section of White Wolf’s e-book called PTSD: Living With The Beast – Personal Story. If you are interested in exploring the subject of PTSD further, you can purchase a copy of the e-book here on Amazon.

About the author:

White Wolf Von Atzingen is the founder of the Element Mountain, based in Vermont. He is also the head instructor for all courses and guide for all events and excursions. “Far more than just a wilderness survival school”, Element Mountain is a place of exploration, growth, creativity, understanding, humility and the primal forces of what we call Life.

White Wolf has extensive experience in the ways of the wild. In part he trained in the wild during his youth under an old Native Metinuwak (“medicine man”) and warrior.

You can keep up with White Wolf at Element Mountain and Facebook.com/ElementMoutainVermont.